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The following story was inspired by the Bolter and Chainsword's Romance in 40k? thread. I'm not sure how well it turned out (some of the prose might get a bit too purplish, and I'm really uncertain about whether I should have used dialogue in earnest instead of conveying the characters' speech through narration), but I'm rather enamored with the ideas behind the story, so I'm going to post it up anyway.

I'd really appreciate comments and constructive criticism here.

That's enough introduction, here's the tale:

A Gathering Place of Fears

Selwyn stared pointedly at one of the rivets embedded in the bracing beam above his bed, attempting to focus on that little patch of rust developing where its paint had been chipped away, trying, and failing, to keep his mind from racing down the same track it had trod every night since he made Brother-Marine. Even sleep could provide no solace from his troubled thoughts, the strange twilight rest provided by the catalepsan node keeping him damnably alert throughout any attempted slumber.

It was Brother Hazen's absence that had brought on the turmoil. He and Hazen had been recruited together, and Selwyn was sure that without Hazen he would never have been able to endure his induction into the ranks of the Astartes. Every time he faltered, though, every time he thought he simply could not fight through the pain any longer, Hazen was there at his side with a helping hand and that ever present smile. Hazen was an eternal optimist, able to laugh off any trouble, and it was his unflappable confidence that had buoyed Selwyn up time after time when his own doubts and fears threatened to drag him under.

The implantation process had been hard on both of them, but even as barely controlled hormonal surges threatened to tear their very bodies apart they clung to each other for support, sweating together through nights of torture and emerging from the crucible of their initiation with an even deeper bond. For years they served as Scouts, fighting as one across unnumbered battlefields until they were at last deemed worthy to be made full Battle-Brothers of the august Dark Angels Chapter of the Adeptus Astartes.

Their long awaited triumph quickly turned sour. Clever Hazen had always been good to his equipment, quick and careful in field-stripping and maintenance, pious in his supplications to the machine spirits of his gear. That aptitude did not go unnoticed, and the moment Hazen was fully inducted into the Chapter's ranks he was seconded to the Armory and dispatched to Mars. For years he was kept sequestered there, being inducted into the mysteries of the machine, while Selwyn fought on alone with nihilistic determination, losing himself as best he could in battle, winning ultimately pointless victories and receiving equally meaningless honors.

That night, though, Selwyn's distress took on a new flavor. During the day he had received news of Hazen's return from Mars. With his initial indoctrination complete, Tech-Apprenta Hazen had been returned to his old strike cruiser to complete additional practical training under the ship's Techmarine. Even as he tried to lose himself in the contemplation of the ceiling, he knew Hazen to be somewhere on board the same vessel, perhaps staring sleeplessly up from his own bed, waiting to find out how Selwyn would react to his coming. Selwyn wanted desperately to go to his love's side, to throw off caution and rush into smiling Hazen's embrace, but his desire was tempered by fear. He had seldom interacted with Techmarines, but he had heard much of the fabled detachment of the Machine-Priests, and he feared what might have become of his beloved in their realm. Could the Cult Mechanicus have finally managed to steal that beautiful smile that Astartes initiation never quite managed to take from Hazen?

Ultimately Selwyn proved unable to smother the embers of hope that burned anew in his breast, and he knew that he could restrain himself no longer. With his scout training nearer to mind than that of his elder brothers, Selwyn stole out of the darkened barracks with ease, slipping into the half-lit corridors of a strike cruiser deep in ship's night. Guided by an admixture of instinct and half-remembered deck plans he worked his way down and back, pushing toward the belly of engineering, the realm of serf, servitor, and techmarine, where arcane rituals were enacted to ensure that the cruiser's heart kept beating and the myriad machine spirits within its metal skin prospered.

As Selwyn drew near the haven of the Techmarine and his ilk, he heard chanting interspersed with harsh blurts of binary, distant, but drawing nearer all the while, and a heady blend of sacred machine oil and incense assailed his nostrils. Fearing discovery, he ducked into a darkened door leading off of the hall and found himself in a long gallery of sleeping Dreadnoughts. Having no desire to trespass in the ancients' chambers, but equally unwilling to return to the hall from whence he came, he hastened along the line of sarcophagi, racing toward a pool of light at the far end of the hangar and its promise of another exit.

He didn't get far before light flooded forth from one of the Old Ones. Taken entirely by surprise, Selwyn stumbled to a halt and turned to face the entombed marine, blinking past the war machine's blinding searchlights to make out the form of the venerable Paraclete, his deep green armor nearly lost under a sea of sparkling battle honors and the cracking yellow parchment of a thousand purity seals. As he stared helplessly at the Dreadnought, paralyzed in awe and terror, his interred brother began to speak. The throbbing bass tones of the voice of millennia of experience shook him quite literally to the bone, and the impact of the elder's words drove him to his knees in shock.

Somehow Paraclete's ineffable wisdom extended to an intimate understanding of Selwyn and the purpose that brought him to the strike cruiser's depths. Selwyn found himself desperately searching the ancient marine's ornate sarcophagus for any symbology suggesting its occupant to be a Librarian as Paraclete laid his mind bare, but could find no such explanation.

Selwyn demanded answers, his voice gratefully free of the unseemly fear that crouched in his heart, and, with a bittersweet chuckle, Paraclete answered that he knew how to read the signs because he, too, had once known such love for a brother. The honored Dreadnought then harked back to his own youth, long ages past, when he had a body of flesh and was called Matthias. He explained how he had fallen into the orbit of a kind, noble, and beautiful marine by the name of D'Annunzio, and took comfort in him for many years, but the depth of his affection blinded him when his lover began to show signs of impiety, and when the corruption claimed him at the height of a campaign against the traitor, Matthias who became Paraclete was forced to do battle with D'Annunzio, who by that point was far too gone to be swayed from his rebellion.

As Paraclete explained it, the private war which ensued when the two met in combat waxed on for long hours, both of them fighting with the brutality born of wounded love, both displaying such terrible skill at arms that the struggle of the armies around them first slowed, then came to a complete halt as all the combatants turned to watch the paired warriors write an epic saga with their blades. Finally Matthias had a chance to deal a death-blow to the fallen D'Annunzio. By that time, though, his treacherous friend's helmet was long destroyed, and his eyes, still so kindly and so beautiful in spite of his newfound malice, looked up at his love's face begging mercy, and Matthias hesitated for one fatal second. Both brothers, both lovers fell that day, together even in the paroxysms of death.

With a long, drawn out sigh, the Dreadnought admitted to Selwyn that he would have been glad to suffer his final doom on that blood-soaked battlefield, rather than be resurrected as Paraclete, but explained that he had kept himself sane through the long centuries through faith that his Primarch and his Emperor must have pulled him back from the brink of death to serve some divinely appointed purpose. He shared his belief that Selwyn's coming during one of his brief periods of wakefulness must indicate that his mind had been preserved to allow him to pass on the wisdom born from his pain to young romantics like Selwyn in times like these, to remind them that attachment leads inevitably to sorrow.

Wise Paraclete knew of Hazen, too, having observed him that very day as the ship's Techmarine introduced him to the maintenance rituals required to attend to its Dreadnoughts, and he urged Selwyn to let his love go. The Old One predicted that Hazen would be unable to dedicate his life to the cold embrace of the machine as the Chapter demanded as long as Selwyn was at his side offering his own all too human love. Selwyn would have to learn to stop fighting fate and start acknowledging that his duty to the Dark Angels as a whole needs must come before his personal affection for any one of their number.

Mastered by his fears, conquered by his impending heartbreak, Selwyn was unable to stand in defiance of Paraclete's admonition, and he beat a hasty retreat to his barracks. And with tears streaming down his flesh-and-blood cheek from his remaining organic eye, Tech-Apprenta Hazen disengaged his mechadendrites from the Dreadnought Paraclete's vox circuitry, praying silently to the Lion, the Emperor, the Omnissiah, and Battle-Brother Selwyn to forgive him.